In the centenary year of Marilyn Monroe’s birth, a letter written by her psychoanalyst Ralph Greenson to the poet Norman Rosten has shed new light on the events of August 4, 1962, the night the actress died. The letter, obtained by the publication that sourced this report, runs to four pages and was sent roughly ten days after Monroe’s death was announced.
Greenson wrote that Monroe had woken around 9am that Saturday, had a grapefruit juice for breakfast, and received plants and furniture deliveries before meeting photographer Lawrence Schiller at 10am to review images from her unfinished film Something’s Got to Give. Greenson arrived for a therapy session around 1pm and stayed until approximately 7pm, with a break around 3pm during which housekeeper Eunice Murray took Monroe for a walk on the beach.
A Party Invitation She Declined
Monroe had been invited to a party in Santa Monica hosted by actor Peter Lawford, who was at that time the brother-in-law of President John F. Kennedy. At around 7:45pm Lawford called to ask whether she would come. Monroe, barely able to speak, told him she could not make it and, with considerable effort, asked him to say goodbye to his wife Pat, to the president, and to himself, adding that he was a good person. Lawford tried to continue the conversation but Monroe said nothing more.
Alarmed, Lawford contacted his agent and Monroe’s lawyer Milton Rudin. Rudin called Monroe’s home and Murray answered, saying everything was fine, though Rudin came away with the impression that Murray had not actually checked on the actress. Around 10pm, publicist Arthur Jacobs received word of Monroe’s death, though it was not made public until much later.
What the Letter Says
In his letter, Greenson told Rosten he had visited Monroe the previous Friday at her usual appointment time and that she appeared to be in reasonably good spirits. She was particularly proud, he wrote, of having gone several weeks without barbiturates. That Friday evening, however, had been ruined by a minor misunderstanding with a friend whose name Greenson declined to give. Monroe slept poorly and took some sleeping pills on Saturday morning.
She telephoned Greenson around 4:30pm on Saturday, sounding depressed and drowsy, so he went to see her. He spent roughly two and a half hours with her. She mentioned wanting to walk on the Santa Monica Pier, which he described as one of the few happy memories of her childhood, but he said he judged it unwise because she was too groggy from the pills and would be recognised. He told her she could walk to the beach with Murray after drinking two large Coca-Colas, and she agreed. Greenson left at around 7:15pm to attend a dinner he had already postponed several times, noting in the letter that he felt it was unfair to keep cancelling on his wife.
At around 7:40pm Monroe called him again, sounding somewhat better. She had just spoken with Joe DiMaggio Jr. and had learned he would not be marrying someone she apparently disapproved of, and this had lifted her mood. Greenson asked her to call him Sunday morning when she woke up, and she promised she would. He also asked Murray to stay overnight, which was not her usual practice on weekends, because Monroe had seemed low and he felt uneasy.
Murray fell asleep. At midnight she noticed the light on under Monroe’s bedroom door but went back to sleep without investigating. At 3:30am she woke again, saw the light was still on, and called Greenson, saying Monroe was not responding to knocks. Greenson told her to try the door and then to look through the front window. Murray did and saw Monroe lying motionless on the bed.
Greenson said he arrived within five minutes and found the door locked. He took a fireplace poker, went around the house, broke a window, and climbed in. From several feet away, he said, he could already see Monroe was dead. She was lying face down, her shoulders bare, with the telephone gripped tightly in her right hand. His internist, Dr. Engelberg, arrived about fifteen minutes later. On Monroe’s dressing table, among many bottles of pills, they found an empty bottle of Nembutal that had not been there during Greenson’s afternoon visit.
Grief and Anger
Greenson told Rosten the loss was compounded by press accounts he considered distorted and by his own self-reproach, though he argued in the letter that the self-blame was ultimately irrational. He wrote that Monroe was in some sense an emotional void that could not be filled, shaped by a childhood without family.
A second letter dated September 17 showed Greenson still processing his grief. He thanked Rosten for reaching out and noted that Rosten had been the only one of Monroe’s friends to contact him. He wrote that he had heard nothing from Lee or Paula Strasberg, from May Riess, or from Arthur Miller.
Monroe’s heirs have recently confirmed that Murray served as a source of information for Greenson about what went on in Monroe’s home, a detail that adds context to the account both gave of that final night.
